“It’s a deal,” Hawke said, not reacting when the young man surged to his feet with the sinuous and surprising quick grace of a snake. She’d spent enough time in the Wilds and enough time as a hunter to know how to hold herself still; it was sometimes the prey’s flinch which would turn a lazy predator to violence. Not that she was prey, and not that he was predator. But better to be safe, than to find herself very sorry.
She watched as his figure vanished into the darkness; so absolute was the night outside the circle of his fire that he was lost to her almost at once. The effect would be eerie if she were not already accustomed to it. The Wilds weren’t her home, not really, but they felt like a second one at times. Hawke cast a slightly wistful thought after Kazi, the young Chasind girl who’d taught Hawke how to walk these lands like one born to them. It wasn’t all Kazi had taught her, and a flush of heat touched Hawke’s body at that remembrance.
She wondered if this Nikos’s sister… sisto? … would be anything like Kazi. From the way the young man had spoken of her, Hawke somehow doubted it. Kazi had been carefree, bright, easy to be around, quick to smile and laugh, quick to call Hawke a stone-headed drylander when she was being foolish – quick also with a kiss or a touch, quick and unstinting with her affection. It hadn’t been love, not for either of them, but oh, had it been sweet.
Hawke quickly finished cooking her dinner over the flame. With a quiet huff, Huan flung himself down beside her, eyes big and pleading at the scent of cooking meat. He was well-trained, her dog; he’d remained in the shadows the entire time the stranger had been at her fire, waiting and watching for any signal from his partner’s hand. It hadn’t come, and so he’d waited there until she was alone again before coming in to join her.
“We have an adventure ahead of us, boy,” she told him, slicing off a hunk of cooked meat and dropping it at his paws. Huan whined questioningly and tilted his head at her; she nodded and jerked her chin in the direction that Nikos had gone.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “Another guide job, that one and his sister. But out of the Wilds, not into them.” Huan’s tail thumped once and he whined again, jaws greasy from the meat he’d snapped up. She fed him more. “I’ll have to swing by home on the way,” she said reluctantly. Her mother wouldn’t like it, not one bit. Carver, neither. Bethany might understand. “I can’t just vanish, after all.” Huan yipped at her once, seeming to approve, and she sighed and scratched at the always-itchy place behind his ears.
An adventure. The world was a very big place, and finally, she was going out into it!
Nikoghos returned with the sunrise. Rather, he returned with the sunrise a few minutes behind him; it had barely touched upon the horizon when he returned to the small camp, a dark figure in the dusky pre-light of dawn. Behind him he led a stocky, shaggy-haired horse, laden with patterned blankets and a considerable number of packs, and behind them both strode a taller figure, made androgynous by the layers of fur and armour that they wore, but likely none other than Nikos’s sister.
Stopping a way from the camp Nikos turned to the woman behind him, and in low, guttural voices they exchanged words. The horse beside them stamped and snorted at the smell of dog, of fire, of unfamiliar human; subconsciously Nikos raised his hand to calm her, pushing his fingers into a mane that was as braided and charm-weighted as his own hair. His sister was agitated, clearly, speaking rapidly and punctuating her words with sharp hand gestures; but not once did Nikos raise his in return, though if the direction of his own gestures were anything to go by, it was clear that the subject of their debate was the guide that he had chosen from them. A debate that had lasted for the remnants of the previous evening, and the night, and the single hour that they had been awake for today.
Eventually the burst of debate seemed to end, or perhaps Nikos simply ended it when he turned his back on his sister, but even though his shoulders were still tense with frustration at his sister’s stubbornness, when he stopped ten paces from the camp his voice was considerately soft. “Hawk,” he called, hesitant to wake the woman if she still slept. They had made their acquaintance only the day before; it would not do to startle her by coming too close when they were still practical strangers. “We are here.”
